The Lies of Fair Ladies Page 23

  Twenty-eight

  Those working days made Luna realize that antiques are, if not everything, so nearly everything as to make no difference. News spread that Lovejoy Antiques, Inc. had money. We became a Mecca. Dealers beat a path to our door. They came singly, of course, which is always a problem, because you don't know who's done a deal with whom. That matters, because you can force prices up or down with that knowledge. Without, it's free-fall.

  Luna showed amazing aptitude, especially for somebody with no experience. She learned to lathe table legs, to plane even. She could use a routing plane almost better than me within three days. And she was neat, so neat I had to ballock her and say for God's sake stop putting the chisels in order of size, and to leave the solvents alone instead of arranging them with the darkest shades near the window. Can drive you mad.

  She liked seeing who would come next. Of course, she had likes and dislikes. She hated that evil swine Acker.

  That week spent itself in buying from dealers, and making stuff. We didn't allow dealers into the workshop, of course. And every day as the light faded Gunge arrived in borrowed vans. We stopped for tea about then, and he'd load up while we discussed the evening plans. Luna had contrived an arrangement with Oliver so that she went home to change afterwards, while I made myself some grub. Then we'd meet in the White Hart and buy, buy, buy handies from dealers in the saloon bar. Mostly jewelry, miniatures, portable antiques like porcelain, small statues, glass, silverware, chatelaines, a few books—though I hate booksellers too much to buy on the hoof. Some stuff was memorable—a velocipede, early nineteenth century. And a collection of mustard pots brought in by Bullrush, a tramp with an eye for a window catch. Don't laugh at mustard pots, incidentally. Odd, but large mid-Victorian silver gilt ones are even more valuable than small genuine sterling ones. Supposedly on account of their usefulness as marmalade pots, but I doubt that. Look for one with a monkey approaching a barrel. Chances are it's a John Bridge, 1825-ish, and costly as a small car. Mostly they're only a week's wages.

  Luna had something of an eye for jewelry, I discovered to my delight. I'd taught her to fake amber, of course, using various resins (copal's the faker's standby) and incorporating dead insects or chips of dried bark or pinecones shredded in a food mixer. The usual. (Don't overdo it, if you try this. I had to admonish her for stuffing the fake ambers with everything but the kitchen sink. One insect wing's fine, a zoo's a giveaway.) By Friday, I wore strings of her fake ambers under my shirt to get the right shine. I'd carved a few into small religious scenes from an invented saint's life. Future archaeologists will write theses on them in years to come.

  Another curious thing: Luna was red-hot on modern stuff— "tomorrow's antiques," the oldest of frauds. I mean, she bought a watercolor sketch by Leon Bakst (never heard of him). Costume, like nothing on earth. She was ecstatic, hugged me afterwards in the car park. It was from La Boutique Fantasque, 1918, apparently worth a new motor. Can you believe it? I shrugged. Not antique at all. I liked the hug. I'd taught her erotic tobacciana at Jenny Calamy's. She snapped up, on description alone, a score of cigarette cases—some cheapish Birmingham Edwardian enamels, others French Art Deco 1920s, others German Edwardian in debased silver. They all had sexy scenes; "risqué" if you're posh, "naughty" if you're not. Ladies up to no good, in various postures. The rule is: The more erotic the more pricey. She bought from a wandering shuffler, the sort of bloke no respectable dealer will look at twice. Luna paid him on the nail. He vanished for an hour. Just when I was getting uneasy, in he shuffled, stinking and bleary, carting this old sack of tobacciana. I was proud of her.

  Yet she missed others. I can't understand it. There's a pretty famous bronze called Tiger Devouring a Gavial. It's gruesomely explicit. In 1831, Bayle the Frenchman exhibited this bronze—they're faked a-plenty by now, of course—and created a sensation. Within milliseconds, all Paris was churning out little animal bronzes. Tigers devouring elephants, lions chewing serpents, even innocents like rabbits and kipping cows. Bronzes vary from Viennese cold-painted cheapos to stallions being boring (a month's wage). Bronze workers are called animaliers, in the antiques trade, but the posh pronounce it through the nose, prefixing it with "les." This enables you to charge double, if the buyer's a nerk. Luna missed a 1585 bronze she-wolf, probably Padua, when it was worth all the rest put together. I told her to stick to modern.

  There's a limit to what you can buy in a night pub. You have to travel for the bigger-priced antiques, furniture, paintings, collections of porcelains.

  I developed a strategy.

  "See, Luna," I told her after we'd unloaded that night. "We're vulnerable."

  "But Mr. Gunge takes it away safely, Lovejoy." She instantly checked the latch. "Don't we trust him? We should."

  Luna's sound instincts: Trust Gunge. "Look about, love."

  She did. The place was crammed with antiques, fake antiques, going-to-be antiques. I'd given IOUs like confetti. Later tonight, when she'd gone home to Grolly Ollie, I’d do my late-night ritual reckoning, how close I was to the thin red line. I must be skating on the very edge. Money really gets me down, the way it spends itself.

  "I've taken options on some paintings. And church woods—old pews, lecterns, vestry wall panels. No. It's all right, Lune. The Church Commissioners have approved their sale." I smiled disarmingly. The Church Commissioners would have hysterics if ever they heard about the transactions.

  "So we have to travel?"

  Divvying antiques is prodigious emotional effort. It's not like the January sales. It's draining. And recovering's like a shattering re-entry from space. It was a long time since I'd done something straightforward and pleasant, like making a fifteenth-century manorial table out of redundant chapel pews. The profit on these is fabulous. Cost: about five or six quid, going to press as they say. London selling price: two months' wages. On the Continent, about six months' wages. All for enjoying yourself, a day's light handiwork.

  "We can't, until after next week's meeting, Lovejoy."

  "Can't? Meeting?" I'd promised myself this re-energizing therapy. I wasn't going to be balked. We'd set up about thirty meetings, pubs, auctions, an oyster fishery even. "You do the meetings, love. You're a natural dealer.''

  She colored, smiling. "Silly. Mr. Vervain. It's tomorrow."

  "What?" I didn't remember any meeting.

  "The answer phone. You agreed to attend. The Moot Hall."

  I would have collapsed on the divan, but it was covered with mounds of Dux porcelains wrapped in tissue paper. Scantily clad nymphets draped about mirrors and marine shells are the vogue. There are plenty about, from 1860 on. Think of unglazed surfaces in pastel colors and you'll make a fortune.

  "I can't," I said, narked. Just when I'd got my own scam going. God, I was nearly within reach of Miss R., the mighty dollop broker, where all would be revealed. And now this media mouthie was—

  "Oliver has gone to inordinate lengths for Mr. Vervain, Love-joy." Reproach time. Luna looked soulful, but the divan was inaccessible. "Think of the benefit for our town! Such an important personality ..." She wasn't a mayoress for nothing. Oliver must have worked on her. Why did he want me there?

  "Can't I postpone it?" It was more than worrying.

  Sod his ratings. Vervain's tactics were as transparent as Oliver's. Politicians and broadcasters are in the same game: grabbing acclaim. The slightest wilt means lying awake night after night as the fear burns into the brain that you aren't loved out there. They'll stop at nothing. And Oliver had as good as admitted that he and Vervain were fellows in a common cause.

  "No, Lovejoy. You've given an undertaking." I couldn't remember this conversation. But she was honest and true, right? She said firmly, "You can't shirk it."

  One word I'd ban if I were king for a day is "shirk." It's always used at me. As if the word itself aims blame. People missile the bloody word at whatever I want to do. I hate it, my cross since Day One.

  "What have I to do?" my traitorous reflex asked dejectedly.


  "Come to the Moot Hall to examine the Borough Regalia. A crowd of dignitaries, headed by Oliver, will be present. Del Vervain will make a speech about the community in local broadcasting, and declare it open."

  "Declare . . . ?" My headaches wait until I run out of aspirin. You'd think doctors would get off their fat bums for once and find a cure. And chemists these days only sell batteries.

  "The fund. To launch the Borough Broadcasting Station." She smiled fondly. "It's my idea. I mentioned it to the Vervains. Oliver won Council approval.''

  "What's this got to do with me?"

  She spoke at length on community bondings, whatever they are, Oliver's need of revenue enhancement . . . Once a mayoress, always political.

  After she'd gone, with much hesitation tonight, I did my sums, reaching a sorry conclusion. Money spends fast, earns slow. I tend to re-learn old truths every day, with surprise.

  I came into this through Drinkwater's mistake. Him thinking I'd done the Cornish Place robbery. Then Prammie Joe's death drew me deeper—police now guessed some wandering psychopath. Then came the inexplicable clustering of antiques into grand-scam patterns. So unlike East Anglia, home of the titch scam. And they multiplied: Tits Alors the prostitute, Connie, anybody with money, plus dealers without. Big Frank's next fiancée Calamity Jenny . . . Mostly clients of Marvella. Then Rye's fall to death.

  Which was frightening. Unprecedented, as politicians say when they've ballsed up the economy yet again.

  Money. Luna's wadge and Laura's formed quite a sum, but I needed more, thanks to Oliver's defection. I had Laura's number, to ring at ten-thirty each evening. She'd made me swear in blood never to ring any other time.

  "Hello? Lovejoy. Laura?"

  "Wait." Clatter, mutter. To another phone? "Yes, Lovejoy?"

  "I'm running out of groats, love."

  "Hasn't a certain politico's spouse funneled you enough?"

  Birds have this knack of inferring you're sleeping with another woman even when they're only asking you to pass the toast. Narked, I said, "Look. There's nothing between Mrs. Carstairs and me—

  "No? Why is she supplying your wants, Lovejoy?"

  See what I mean? Ten meanings, one set of words. "Investment," I snapped. "And if you can't talk about money without bringing—"

  She purred, "Don't take on, Lovejoy. I'm on my way."

  On her way? I hadn't asked her to come. It took four goes to replace the receiver.

  She arrived in less than half an hour. We sat and talked. I got a check for another quarter. With that, I'd be well in. We talked for a short while. Not long enough. I tried sussing what she was playing at, her funding a shoddy like me.

  "You're an investment, Lovejoy,” she told me several times. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  "Investments aren't a gift."

  "No. They have strings attached, called profit." I found some sherry. She was amused. "The last time I was offered leftover Christmas Tio Pepe I was fourteen, Lovejoy. Is this how you seduce Mrs. Carstairs?"

  "Mind your own business. It's all I've got."

  She did that slow-waggle stroll, touching the antiques, feeling the divan. I'd cleared part of it, for sleep.

  "Is this where you . . . what's the term you people use, Lovejoy? Shag?" She smiled, cocky, watching my face. "Lay? Bonk? Hump? . . . our esteemed mayoress, Lovejoy?"

  "Listen, you." I was getting hot under the collar. She was gorgeous, agreed. But she had no right to come hard. "I don't disclose confidences about birds. It's my way. If you think your gelt buys you confidences, you can take it and shove off."

  No good. It only fueled her interest. Her eyes were shining. "You love antiques so much, yet you'd abandon them? Just to preserve . . . ?" She came close. I was having a hell of a time getting the sherry cork out. Rusted in, probably. "She must bed really fantab."

  "That does it. Out."

  I slammed the bottle down and pushed her. She fell back, onto the divan. I just managed to rescue two Royal Dux pieces before she hit.

  "You silly cow!" I blazed, gathering them safe from this marauder. "These damage easy! Don't you know the effort that went into making—?"

  "Best you've ever had, Lovejoy, was she?"

  "Any one of these is worth two of you, you dozy bitch."

  "Better than you think I could be, Lovejoy?" She was swinging her foot, her shoe almost off the upturned toes. Her legs were slender, beautiful. Might as well talk to the wall. I surrendered.

  "What is it, Laura?" Wearily I put the Dux pieces on a harmonium keyboard out of her way. "After a bit of rough scruff? Between college Romeos? Mrs. Carstairs beat you at tennis? Doing down Daddy's hand-picked fiancé? What?"

  "All nine, Lovejoy." She moved the rest of the porcelains to the harmonium. "I hope these are new sheets, Lovejoy." She stood, shivered elegantly. She was beautiful. "Turn the heating on. I'll catch my death."

  "Heat spoils polishes." My voice had thickened.

  She laughed, dropped her clothes, slipped into bed. "My teeth are chattering. In, for Christ's sake. Get me warm.''

  "Look," I tried weakly. What's the use? Women can do what they like. We pretend for our self-respect that we're making decisions. We're not. It's a woman's world. The proverbs lie.

  Next morning she was gone by seven o'clock. She stared astonished while I made us both breakfast, followed me about saying how on earth, all that kind of woman's incomprehension. She dressed after I'd had both our breakfasts. She wasn't hungry. She smiled, paused in the porch to ask who said thank you and to whom.

  "Etiquette doesn't cover this, does it, Lovejoy?"

  "What's etiquette?" I said, making her laugh. She seemed so familiar, her face filled with life. Almost as if I'd known her in a previous incarnation. Lovely.

  "Verdict, Lovejoy?" I had to work that one out. Was she better sex than arch enemy Mrs. Carstairs.

  "That's confidential." I was narked. "I have no relationship with that lady." Who keeps score, making love? Love is yippee, hundred percent of itself. Believing there are grades of totality is a woman's myth. I didn't tell Laura this. They never believe me.

  She left in her colossal motor without a wave. It howled off up the lane, round at the chapel, then silence.

  Reliable old Gunge, the dealer who could be trusted, came about thirty minutes later to make his usual daily collection. He was in distress. Connie Hopkins had gone missing. Gunge asked did I know where she'd gone. He'd searched high and low. No sign of her in her shop. He seemed to have a key. Interesting, this. I didn't know he and Connie had got that far. I went through the daft rigmarole that telly series have taught us, where did you see her last, have you phoned her parents. Quite lunatic. Lost is lost. The only person who'd know about Connie was sitting on the divan, head in his hands, stuttering, in a state of collapse.

  Luna arrived, bright of eye and bushy-tailed. Within seconds she was contributing stupidity.

  "You should have put an advert in the newspaper, Mr. Gunge!" she said cheerfully. Then wrinkled her nose. "Is that perfume?"

  Another of those days. I took her outside by the elbow.

  "Luna, love. Just for today, stay mum unless I say. Understand?"

  "It's a perfectly sensible suggestion, Lovejoy. Newspapers are a sound medium— "

  "Gunge can't frigging well read, you silly cow." I waited until it sank in, saw her face discard thrill for horror. "Haven't you noticed that I mutter the catalogue descriptions out loud when he's close by?"

  Her eyes filled. "Oh, Lovejoy. I never dreamt—"

  "It's all right. He's used to stupidity." I tried to look thrilled, Luna style. "I'm quite looking forward to the, eh. Moot Hall."

  Twenty-nine

  The antiques, Lovejoy. Do we keep adding?"

  ''You've our lists. Gunge?" He keeps my handwritten tally somewhere in his massive bearish presence. Doesn't need any, of course. Illiterates have a fantastically accurate visual memory. I've seen him spot a dud Wellington chest from a reflection in a
window across the road, because its veneer had changed since it was auctioned a year before. Hawkeyes.

  "Aye, Lovejoy." To my dismay great tears began to roll down into his beard. I looked at the floor. "I don't want anything to happen to Connie, Lovejoy. She's scared. Even before Rye died." I'm really useless at times like this. "Look, Gunge. Who else did Connie confide in?"

  "Nobody. Not even you. She wondered, but said you're unreliable about women."

  Bloody nerve. Typical womentalk. What do they know? "What was she frightened of. Gunge?" Luna, ears wafting in the breeze. I glared at her coldly. This was supposed to be a private conversation.

  "Of being killed. She talked a lot about spells." Spells? Was Connie going off her trolley? I'd met her that day off the train. She'd been edgy, definitely spooked about something.

  "By whom? Why didn't she go to the police? Was it an antique dealer? I think we should—"

  My bent eye made Luna peter out, sulking.

  "Right, Gunge." Leaving the antiques in the old Boxtenholt aerodrome would be asking for trouble. "What help've you got?"

  "Just me. Connie didn't want it any other way."

  "Then we're in business," I said. I felt as near to a smile as I'd been for many a day. Or night. "Find Sandy, Luna. Tell him and Mel I want to contact the dollop broker. Today."

  She inhaled a gale, only said, "Will he know how?"

  "Not himself, no." But telling Radio Sandy is our equivalent of BBC One. "Gunge. You and me will gather everything I've got, ordered, can find, before nightfall. Okay?"

  "Will it help us to find Connie?"

  "I don't know. Gunge. But we'll try, eh?"

  "Thanks, Lovejoy." He heaved his enormous mass upright and shambled off to start the loading. This morning he had a pale blue three-tonner. You never see him twice in the same vehicle. I wondered if he simply nicked them.

  He'd been gone an hour, with me and Luna finishing frantically in the workshop, when Drinkwater visited to say that one Miss Connie Hopkins had gone missing, and did I know anything about her. I said no, how terrible, and had he checked her parents. He issued warnings, and left with his teeth clacking and ear all a-twitch.